In our open, tolerant country, there are, thankfully, few issues that remain taboo. But, motivated by the fear of both legitimising racism and encouraging the extreme right, migration is one. Yet for many voters, it continues to be a top issue.

My constituency of Barking in east London has experienced rapid change, moving from predominantly white neighbourhoods to many multiracial neighbourhoods. At the same time, my constituents are facing other challenges. Young families on low wages cannot afford to buy a home and the council house stock has shrunk with tenants exercising their right to buy. These young families enjoy few choices.

Despite the actual fall in crime, people's fear of crime remains strong. On some estates, people are fed up with the quality of their environment, all too often seeing broken bottles and used needles on the streets and in the stairwells of their estates.

For some, it is easy to blame the new families for the frustrations they feel. As people living in Barking see new faces and hear new languages, they often link the problems in their community with the migratory changes. Unless we listen, we shall be unable to convince people that we are on their side as they learn to live with new neighbours in the tolerant and strong multiracial society we on the liberal left desire. This stifled debate means we have missed the opportunity to articulate more clearly the huge benefits to our economy, our culture and the evolving nature of our Britishness that migration brings.

Britons choose to retire to Spain or France, yet some here find it difficult to adjust to Poles and Romanians who come to the UK to work. Thousands of our citizens emigrate to Australia and financial centres around the world, yet Africans or Asians who come to the UK to seek a better life are resented.

We need just immigration policies that are fairly and efficiently administered. But we also need to acknowledge that population change is a feature of the modern world, of our globalisation. Yet the period of transition can be disturbing and painful. We all find change difficult and new neighbours, new shops and new habits in our street or on our estate do demand adjustment. As ever, the people who face the greatest changes tend to be those who live in the poorest communities where migrants can afford to settle.

So while we need strong leadership to promote the rewards migration offers, it is only fair to hear the resentments and fears it can arouse. Only by listening to those fears can we demonstrate understanding for the difficulties settled communities experience in adjusting and move beyond the fears to secure tolerance and harmony.

Action to tackle the shortage of affordable housing, such as the eco-housing announced by Gordon Brown, is a first great step to addressing people's housing concerns.

But we should go further. We need to question and debate whether our rules for deciding who can access social housing are fair and promote tolerance rather than inviting division. Even if we were vastly to increase the amount of social housing available, we would still need to ration what will always be a limited resource.

We prioritise the needs of an individual migrant family over the entitlement others feel they have. So a recently arrived family with four or five children living in a damp and overcrowded, privately rented flat with the children suffering from asthma will usually get priority over a family with less housing need who have lived in the area for three generations and are stuck at home with the grandparents.

We should look at policies where the legitimate sense of entitlement felt by the indigenous family overrides the legitimate need demonstrated by the new migrants.

We should also look at drawing up different rules based on, for instance, length of residence, citizenship or national insurance contributions which carry more weight in a transparent points system used to decide who is entitled to access social housing.There are a small number of confirmed refugees who, of course, would receive the same entitlements as British citizens. However, most new migrant families are economic migrants who choose to come to live and work here. If you choose to come to Britain, should you presume the right to access social housing?

Need is an important factor, but it's not the only factor. This is about a rebalancing; listening and responding to a strongly felt sense of unfairness in the allocation of public resources. In lancing that boil, we could do much to promote understanding which leads to better tolerance and integration in our society.

That alone is not enough. For instance, more people now acknowledge the importance of learning English. But I would go further and insist that fluency in English should become a condition of acquiring British citizenship. Which means the state providing good-quality language teaching. But it also places responsibility on new migrants to prioritise learning English when they choose to come and settle in Britain. It is only when you have a fluent command of the language that you can properly exercise your rights as well as fulfilling your responsibilities in society. We need also to ensure that the powerful impact of education is used to promote tolerance.

We must not allow an unintended consequence of the recent surge in faith schools to be the propagation of suspicion and hostility between different faith communities. We need a good, old-fashioned dose of community work to break down the barriers that inhibit new migrants from taking part in residents' associations and community organisations.

As an immigrant myself, although I am white and middle class, I know how difficult it is to adapt in a new country. While my family has always been immensely grateful for being welcomed to the UK, I hope we have also contributed to British society. I know that striking the best balance in our approach to migration is fraught with huge difficulties. But if we don't dare to talk about it, we'll never get it right.